Wednesday, 18 April 2018

Widerøe pins future of social routes on electric plane breakthrough

Widerøe is banking on the launch of an all-electric, sub 50-seat aircraft by the end of the next decade in order to maintain its deep footprint in the domestic Norwegian market.

“I really believe that we will have a major technology shift in this turboprop segment, and I think, in fact, there could be a possibility for flying all-electric … in the timeframe around 2030,” Stein Nilsen, Widerøe chief executive, told me last week during the ferry flight of the airline’s new Embraer E190 E2 from Aberdeen to Bergen.

Nilsen was responding to a question about Widerøe's 25 Bombardier Dash 8 Q100s and Q200s – small turboprops with 39 seats that the airline mostly deploys on Public Service Obligation (PSO) routes within Norway...